1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus extracting a required number of images with high user satisfaction from multiple images at the time of creating an album or performing index printing after the multiple images are collected.
2. Description of the Related Art
Diffusion of digital still cameras and increase in capacity of recording media have made it possible to easily take a large number of pictures and to store those pictures as images in the recording media. Thus, even a general user can decorate the stored images and adjust a layout of the images, and consequently make advanced layout printing including multiple-sheet printing and the like, such as album and index printing. Meanwhile, various methods have been proposed to implement such advanced layout printing. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H11-232007 (1999) proposes a method in which, when the number of images extracted by a user does not reach the number of images that can be laid out on a predetermined layout, an image following the last extracted image is automatically extracted and arranged in a region where no image is arranged yet. Moreover, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-249434 proposes an album creation system configured to, when the number of images extracted by a user does not reach the number of images required to create an album, analyze information on multiple inputted images, and then acquire an additionally extracted image from an image database on the basis of a result of the analysis.
However, in the method described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H11-232007 (1999), when the number of good images (images satisfactory to the user) extracted by the user does not reach the number of images that can be laid out, subsequently extracted images may not be good always. Specifically, an image that is apparently dissatisfactory to the user (failure image) may be automatically extracted. Here, the “failure image” is an image including at least one “dissatisfaction factor” such as underexposure, poor color balance, slur/blurring and poor composition. Moreover, also the album creation system described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-249434 may extract apparent failure images as additional images when many failure images are included in the image database.